Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream
by Hunter S. Thompson
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Book Summary Information
Author: Hunter S. ThompsonEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 1998-05-12
ISBN: 0679785892
Number of pages: 224
Publisher: Vintage
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780679785897
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Book Reviews of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream
Book Review: "Gonzo" would be an understatement
Summary: 4 Stars
I'd already seen the movie (and couldn't have been happier with the casting of Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro), so I knew approximately what to expect, but as is often the case when books are adapted for the screen, what movies gain in literal representation they lose in flavor of language. And that, I would say, was the best part of this book: Thompson's rollicking, piquant wordplay that both lives up to and brings to life the outrageous escapades described over the course of 200 breathlessly rambling pages.
If Thompson and his nameless attorney consumed even half the drugs he says they did, it must've been a bender of frightening proportions, that much is clear. But amidst the staggering amounts of illegal substances, boorish behavior, and assorted misdemeanors, what comes out through it all is Thompson's keen eye for human nature, mordant wit, and ability to turn one colorful phrase after another. Countless times I wanted to reach for my pencil to make a note or copy down a particularly choice quotation, but instead let myself be carried along by the rushing, post-Kerouackian current of Thompson's prose, figuring that blasting along without stopping was more in the spirit of the thing anyhow.
Kids may not be reading it in school 100 years from now (in fact, I hope they're not!), and anyone looking for character development or serious philosophical reflections is looking in the wrong place, but for sheer joy of language it has lessons that a lot of writers could learn from.
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Summary of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is the best chronicle of drug-soaked, addle-brained, rollicking good times ever committed to the printed page. It is also the tale of a long weekend road trip that has gone down in the annals of American pop culture as one of the strangest journeys ever undertaken.Now this cult classic of gonzo journalism is a major motion picture from Universal, directed by Terry Gilliam and starring Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro. Opens everywhere on May 22, 1998.
Heralded as the "best book on the dope decade" by the New York Times Book Review, Hunter S. Thompson's documented drug orgy through Las Vegas would no doubt leave Nancy Reagan blushing and D.A.R.E. founders rethinking their motto. Under the pseudonym of Raoul Duke, Thompson travels with his Samoan attorney, Dr. Gonzo, in a souped-up convertible dubbed the "Great Red Shark." In its trunk, they stow "two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half-full of cocaine and a whole galaxy of multicolored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers.... A quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls," which they manage to consume during their short tour.
On assignment from a sports magazine to cover "the fabulous Mint 400"--a free-for-all biker's race in the heart of the Nevada desert--the drug-a-delic duo stumbles through Vegas in hallucinatory hopes of finding the American dream (two truck-stop waitresses tell them it's nearby, but can't remember if it's on the right or the left). They of course never get the story, but they do commit the only sins in Vegas: "burning the locals, abusing the tourists, terrifying the help." For Thompson to remember and pen his experiences with such clarity and wit is nothing short of a miracle; an impressive feat no matter how one feels about the subject matter. A first-rate sensibility twinger, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a pop-culture classic, an icon of an era past, and a nugget of pure comedic genius. --Rebekah Warren
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